René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was born on December 4, 1875, in Prague.
In 1886, he was enrolled in a military academy, where he attended until an illness forced him out in 1891. He then enrolled in a trade school but got expelled in 1892.
After getting expelled, he took his writing seriously and published Life and Songs, his first poetry collection, in 1894.
In 1896, Rilke moved to Munich, where he met and fell in love with Lou Andreas-Salome. He changed his name from Rene to Rainer at her bidding, and they continued a relationship until 1900. However, she remained a close friend and confidant of Rainer's until his passing.
In 1900, Rainer met sculptor Clara Westhoff, and they eventually married and had a daughter. By then, he had some acclaim for his writings and was known as one of Germany's most intense lyrical poets.
That inspired Rainer to begin one of his most ambitious projects, called the Duino Elegies. He began writing it while living as a guest in the Duino Castle in 1912, but depression, the war, and other roadblocks kept him from finishing it until 1922.
However, once he published it, it quickly gained a reputation for being his most important work.
Rainer died on December 29, 1926, of leukemia. Before he died, Rainer had chosen a poem as his epitaph, and it's now inscribed on his gravestone.
It reads:
Rose, o pure contradiction, desire
to be no one's sleep beneath so many
lids.
(please forgive any mispronunciations. I did my best!)
